Monthly Archives: December 2016

Lonesome Dove is my favorite western. Over Christmas we had a Lonesome Dove marathon right here on our black leather couch, all snug and cozy in our cabin while the mercury dropped and snow blew. Watching Texas Rangers wrangle and drive cattle across the country.

The two main characters, Woodrow Call and Gus McCrae, seemed to be about as different as night and day. Stoic vs gregarious. Unbending vs flexible. Tight-lipped vs chatty. You get the idea…black vs white. Captian Call seemed to need no one and want no one. Captain McCrae sought out and relished interaction.

Love is what they had in common. They loved deeply. Crusty, scraggly love creeped out from around the edges of their Texas Ranger hardness. Carving wooden headstones, saving hostages from Native American outlaws, incessant arguing were a few of their expressions of love for friends and each other.

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…has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them
Leave them alone and they’ll come home
Wagging their tails behind them.

I still have that book of nursery rhymes my mother read to me as a child. One night she told me to tell her the stories. From then on bedtime stories turned into me seeing how many nursery rhymes I could recite on my own. Lying on my little twin bed under the eaves of the old farmhouse roof, I recited stories about Peter the Pumpkin Eater, Mary and her garden of silver bells, and Little Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet. Before long, I’d fall asleep in the middle of a verse and mom would tuck me in.

Eventually, we grew out of that routine. Little girls grow up and leave the ‘tucking-in’ behind them. But those nursery rhymes buried themselves in my memory bank, laying dormant, waiting for an opportunity to be called up.

Fast forward about some thirty-odd years to a log-cabin.

I sit under the sloped eaves of a mountain log cabin, on the floor, next to my son’s little bed. He’s fighting a nap – so afraid to close his eyes for fear of missing out on something. And out they come – those characters and rhymes from my childhood. Once again the clock strikes one and down the mouse runs. Jack and Jill are running up the hill and the kittens have lost their mittens.

I am transported to a time when I was connected to my mother through stories, rhymes, and bedtime. I stroke my son’s forehead and the connection extends across the next generation.

Now, if he’d just go to sleep!

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Move in day to the Veterans Home was hard. The staff made it better and bearable. He seemed to adjust overnight to the fact that this was his new home. I still fight the guilt that creeps up the inside of my throat like bad chili.

I remind myself in those moments that he’s safe. That he is now being taken care of better than he can take care of himself and better than I can take care of him. When he’s doing very well, it’s easy to question if I’ve done the right thing. But as quickly as the question arises, my dad makes a statement that is so out of left field and wrong that I know he’s in the right place.

Doing the right thing for a parent who is physically and cognitively challenged, even if that’s the thing they don’t want, is hard. Letting go of all the inappropriate and mean comments, letting go of all the times he was not there for me when I needed him, letting go of the anger of how he has lived his life, it’s like taking 100 pound stone off my back.